Video: Patrick’s ed-reform plan: Turn 391 teacher unions into one

Friday

Jun 27, 2008 at 12:01 AMJun 27, 2008 at 4:35 PM

Among the bold reforms in Gov. Deval Patrick’s 12-year plan to improve public education in Massachusetts is a politically risky undertaking to merge the state’s 391 teachers unions into a single centralized union.

John P. Kelly

Among the bold reforms in Gov. Deval Patrick’s 12-year plan to improve public education in Massachusetts is a politically risky undertaking to merge the state’s 391 teachers unions into a single centralized union.

No state other than Hawaii has such a system in place. And teachers here are already expressing cautious resistance to what is still a vague proposal, even as they praise other aspects of the governor’s plan.

Patrick has spent much of the week publicizing his Readiness Project, a catalog of educational reforms he argues are needed to ensure children of all backgrounds, races and income levels get an equally good education that prepares them to compete in a global marketplace.

Nine months in development, the plan’s goals include longer school days and school years, universal pre-kindergarten, free community college and an increase in financial aid. It would also allow undocumented children to pay in-state rates to attend public universities and colleges. Patrick unveiled the plan without discussing its cost or proposing a way to pay for its implementation.

Merging the unions is meant to be a way for the state to save on health care and pension costs while broadening its ability to entice highly qualified teachers to work in poorer districts. At the same time, it would free local school boards from what can be the grueling task of contract negotiations.

Paul Reville, the governor’s top education adviser, said the local boards are often “outmatched” by well organized unions and so bargain “inefficiently.”

In an interview Thursday with The Patriot Ledger, Reville said adding flexibility to how salaries and benefits are set would create ways to attract top talent into the teaching world. For example, private sector professionals might be willing to bring their specialized knowledge to the classroom for higher up-front salaries, and, in exchange, be willing to do without the long-term benefits meant for teachers who spend their entire careers in the profession.

Ann Wass, who represents nearly 108,000 teachers as president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, said a “revolving door is not something to encourage” in the school system. As for the wider notion of a statewide teachers union, Wass said it has never before been talked about in Massachusetts and the association has yet to take a position.

“We don’t know what it really is about,” she said. “Is it just cost savings? I don’t know what effect, if any, it would have on learning.”

Paul Phillips, head of the teachers union in Quincy, said an all-encompassing contract for teachers would have to account for cost-of-living differences across the state.

“The amount needed to live in Cambridge as a teacher is much different from what you need in Fall River,” Phillips said.

And Phillips, who last year led the 900 members of his union in the state’s first teachers strike in more than a decade, had words of caution on assembling a mammoth, statewide bargaining unit: “If it goes sour, you end up with a statewide problem.”

A strike shuttered Hawaii’s 256 public schools and 10 college campuses for 20 days in 2001, when 16,000 teachers and professors in the state’s lone teachers union walked off the job in a contract stalemate with Gov. Benjamin J. Cayetano.

Perhaps mindful of the potential political backlash, Gov. Patrick has listed the statewide union as a goal to be achieved more than eight years from now.

Yet another element of Patrick’s plan is to establish “readiness schools” around the state, similar to charter schools in that they could deviate from state curriculum guidelines but are accountable to local boards.

Reville said a finance commission being seated by the governor will study ways to finance the reforms and will report back by mid-November.

In a luncheon with reporters on Wednesday, Patrick said “all options are on the table,” including reviving the debate over licensing resort casinos to raise tax revenue. However, he said the reliance on property taxes to pay for education must be lightened.